How fast is Seagate's latest series?

By Koen CrijnsMonday 13 August 2012 14:58

Introduction

At the start of 2012 Seagate launched a new series of 3.5-inch hard drives, called the Barracuda 7200.14. These are interesting because they have 1 TB platters, which is a new milestone. The high data-density has two advantages, more MB per square centimetre always results in better performance, and less platters means lower prices.

It's interesting that Seagate views the new Barracuda as successor to its entire line-up of 3.5-inch disks. Last year it consisted of the Barracuda Green (5900 rpm, energy-efficient), Barracuda 7200.12 (7200 rpm, standard) and Barracuda XT (7200 rpm, high-end). Seagate claims that the new hard drives are so efficient thanks to the new platters, that there no longer is a reason to have a Barracuda Green series. Barracuda XT is also end-of-life, and will eventually be replace by hybrid HDD/SSDs. What happened to the 7200.13 is unclear, perhaps in a bout of superstition they decided to skip it.

We tested the 2 TB version of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, which you can recognise by the product code ST2000DM001.You can find it for an average price of £90, which is quite affordable for a 2 TB disk. You pay quite a bit more for a Hitachi 7K3000 2TB or Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB. Seagate's newly acquired Samsung brand only has a 5400rpm 2 TB drive available for that price.

The hard drive uses the SATA 600 interface, and has 64 MB cache. According to Seagate it should have an average transfer rate of 156 MB/s, and an average access time of 8.5 ms. Those are good stats for a 3.5-inch 7200rpm drive.